WI Native Americans Helped the Nazis?

[DakotaTimeTraveler]

Before and during WW2, there was an active plan for Nazi Germany to recruit Native Americans to their side against the United States.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016...ed-sioux-extension-native-americans-aryans-2/


There was a deeper reason for this; according to my research, film and literary Westerns (cowboys, the old West, etc) were popular in Germany even before the rise of Hitler. Hitler himself was a fan of Karl May Westerns and even saw a 1936 film made called Der Kaiser Von Kalifornien. Nazis went as far as to consider Native Americans as honorary Aryans and promised them to somehow return their lands to them in the event of a victory.

Let's say for the sake of this thread that there is widespread aid the Natives give to the Nazis during the war (espionage, sabotage, aiding Axis field operatives in North America, etc). What would become of the Natives as a whole after the war? What butterflies would this have on the Native rights movement in the 1960s/1970s - does it get stronger or is it undermined?

Would sympathizers try to justify the Native aid to the Axis? ("Hitler was evil and the Holocaust was inexcusable...but can you really blame the Native Americans after what was done to them for centuries?)

 

[frustrated progressive]

They can't do anythng significant, given how small and incompetent the German spy network was in the US. It just poisons the internal situation further.

 

[SsgtC]

"We were genocided by insane white Europeans. Let's help insane white Europeans genocide someone else." I don't think that will go over well in many Tribal Councils.

 

[AltoRegnant]

"We were genocided by insane white Europeans. Let's help insane white Europeans genocide someone else." I don't think that will go over well in many Tribal Councils.

That and FDR already imprisoned Germans, Italians, and most seriously, Japanese. So ya know.... bad plan for any native group to give him half a reason

 

[Polish Eagle]

"We were genocided by insane white Europeans. Let's help insane white Europeans genocide someone else." I don't think that will go over well in many Tribal Councils.

To be fair, that was basically the justification for Bandera helping the Nazis. And the Croats. I think you could find a few American Indians willing to do it.

Emphasis on few, though, because the genocide of the American Indians was so nearly complete that there weren't enough to do anything even if every one of them resolved to overthrow the US government, the Germans were in no real position to help them, and American Indian reservations were placed intentionally in marginal lands far away from places where most American industry and economy was centered.

This would be Zimmerman Telegram 2: This Time, It's Stupider. Any actual tribal government that got wind of this would cull the agents themselves to avoid having the US government bring the hammer back down on them.

 

[skarosianlifeform]

Actually, tribal governments that learn of this might use this to make a big loud show of patriotism and how they refused Hitler's offer. It would make them more popular and cost them nothing.

 

[Centralen]

Even if Native Americans wanted to help the Nazis, they would have no capability to and would know that and not want to upset the US government.

 

[Hagre]

What would they be able to do even if they wanted to help the Nazis? When is the PoD here?

 

[SsgtC]

What would they be able to do even if they wanted to help the Nazis? When is the PoD here?

If any tribe was insane enough to try? Low level intelligence most likely. There weren't very many Native Americans in critical fields or jobs.

 

[GlobalHumanism]

"Lol wha?"

This is exactly what FDR would've said if this bit of intel hit his desk.
The Native American population had no feasible recourse by 1940 to attempt a pro-Nazi protest, let alone an insurrection, no matter what Hitler promised

 

[Hagre]

If any tribe was insane enough to try? Low level intelligence most likely. There weren't very many Native Americans in critical fields or jobs.

Free Native American Legion? I seriously doubt any of them could do anything to help Germany before FDR notices.

 

[marathag]

because the genocide of the American Indians was so nearly complete

Hardly.
the 1860 census recorded 339,421 Native Americans. After the Plains wars, in 1880, it was 306,543, with a number of Tribal members off to Canada to a low of 248,000 in 1890, and increased since.
No that was nowhere like what happened to Paraguay in the Triple-Alliance War

 

[Arkenfolm]

https://crosscut.com/2016/12/native-american-nazi-chief-red-cloud-elwood-tanner

This guy, "Chief Red Cloud" wasn't actually a chief but he was an American Indian lawyer from Portland and member of the Silver Shirts, supporter of the German American Bund, and virulent antisemite. There was also "Chief New Moon", a Cherokee activist from around the same with a similar message.

Maybe you could get these two to lead a splinter group from the American Indian Federation and have them link up with the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World or other Japanese-backed "anti-colonial" groups. But all you'd do is get the government to actually take action and intern Chief Red Cloud and whatever few followers don't melt away after the US joins the war.

 

[Hagre]

https://crosscut.com/2016/12/native-american-nazi-chief-red-cloud-elwood-tanner

This guy, "Chief Red Cloud" wasn't actually a chief but he was an American Indian lawyer from Portland and member of the Silver Shirts, supporter of the German American Bund, and virulent antisemite. There was also "Chief New Moon", a Cherokee activist from around the same with a similar message.

Maybe you could get these two to lead a splinter group from the American Indian Federation and have them link up with the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World or other Japanese-backed "anti-colonial" groups. But all you'd do is get the government to actually take action and intern Chief Red Cloud and whatever few followers don't melt away after the US joins the war.

It honestly seems more likely to have the Japanese support them more thoroughly rather than with the Nazis. IOTL, Tokyo was backing several Black nationalist organizations at once.

 

[Khanzeer]

Ok let's not compare DELIBERATE starvation of 2 million Slavic POWs in 1-2 yrs [ what nazis did] + 6 Mil Holocaust of jews + 6 ? M slav civilians etc
With the loss of native north American population from VARIOUS MULITIPLE CAUSES over 200 + yrs.And lets not forget natives allied with various enemies of USA at many times and their reprisals against European settlers were at many times shockingly barbaric.

 

[Dilvish]

If this support for Germany somehow happened, I imagine there would be a fear of it spreading across the border to Canada. Why would such a movement among the native population be limited to the USA?

 

[David T]

Vern Partlow, a left-wig folksinger, did have a song called "I'm a Native American Nazi" but that wasn't what he had in mind!

https://clyp.it/jn5nrjqy

There were a few real cases, though: "In the history of Nazism in the Pacific Northwest, few figures stand out so incongruously as Chief Red Cloud, who was in reality the invented persona of a Native American attorney based in Portland named Elwood A. Towner. In the 1930s and ‘40s he traveled to Seattle, Spokane, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Washington, DC, Alaska, Mexico, and Canada and elsewhere, spreading the word about the threat Communism and Jews posed to America and the American Indian." https://crosscut.com/2016/12/native-american-nazi-chief-red-cloud-elwood-tanner

And some people suspected the American Indian Federation of fascist leanings: "The AIF received national attention quickly because of its red-baiting accusations against the BIA and the Department of the Interior, accusing commissioner John Collier and his supporters of being atheist, communist, and supported by the ACLU.[8] Some AIF members also made public anti-black and anti-Semitic comments, and other groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Silver Shirts of America used the AIF to advance their own causes.[9] In 1938, the Federal Bureau of Investigation put AIF leaders under surveillance, but concluded the AIF was not a subversive organization.[10] " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Federation

 

[SsgtC]

Ok let's not compare DELIBERATE starvation of 2 million Slavic POWs in 1-2 yrs [ what nazis did] + 6 Mil Holocaust of jews + 6 ? M slav civilians etc
With the loss of native north American population from VARIOUS MULITIPLE CAUSES over 200 + yrs.And lets not forget natives allied with various enemies of USA at many times and their reprisals against European settlers were at many times shockingly barbaric.

It's still genocide. Pre colonization, North America alone was home to between 10 and 50 million Native Americans. By 1890, as noted up thread, there were less than 300,000 left. No matter which starting figure you use, that's a minimum of 97% killed. Even today, there are only 5.2 million people in the US who identify as Native American. So that's still a loss of population of between 50 and 90 percent. Just because it was carried out over a longer time frame doesn't mean it wasn't a genocide

 

[marathag]

It's still genocide. Pre colonization, North America alone was home to between 10 and 50 million Native Americans. By 1890, as noted up thread, there were less than 300,000 left. No matter which starting figure you use, that's a minimum of 97% killed. Even today, there are only 5.2 million people in the US who identify as Native American. So that's still a loss of population of between 50 and 90 percent. Just because it was carried out over a longer time frame doesn't mean it wasn't a genocide

Since near all of those deaths were from introduction of disease, of which the Spanish and the rest had close to zero knowledge of how diseases worked in the 15th and 16thC, when most of the deaths occurred, you can't call it a Genocide: that takes deliberate acts

Like in Tasmania or Hispaniola, that was deliberate

introducing a disease that your own people suffer from? not the same league.

No-one will ever be able to come up with a true number, as even before Columbus, there were huge drops in population among the Mound Builders and Anasazi

 

[Hagre]

Uhhh, can we keep the thread on topic before it spirals into something else?